Madam, - We'll have to take Raymond Deane's word that he includes no Holocaust-deniers among his personal friends (April 12th), but there are certainly plenty of them among his political allies - those in the Muslim world who join him in trying to delegitimise Israel by labelling it "the Israeli rogue state". These elements - dominant in Iran and Syria, powerful elsewhere - daily flood the media of the Middle East with hate-propaganda which makes no distinction between anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish content.
Last December's Holocaust denial conference in Tehran was no exceptional event. Recent programmes on Iranian TV have retailed the age-old "blood libel" (in which rabbis are said to have murdered hundreds of European children in the last century to make Passover matzos), the claim that Israeli doctors steal the eyes of Palestinian children (the theme of a drama serial), and the forgery from Tsarist Russia known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On Saudi and Egyptian TV toddlers can be seen sitting at the feet of imams who teach them Koranic verses which tell them Jews are descended from those whom God turned into apes and pigs. Meanwhile, Mein Kampf does a brisk trade in the bookshops.
These are the countries which have refused over 60 years to absorb - or even provide humane conditions for - the Palestinian refugees in their territories displaced as a result of the jihad declared against the Israeli state at its birth in 1948. This is in contrast to Israel's integration of the similar numbers of Jewish refugees displaced from the Arab states at the same time.
Anyone swayed by Mr Deane's talk of "the world's fourth most powerful army" and "brutal rape" should glance at the map of the Middle East and remind themselves of the true dimensions of this Israeli giant - a tiny sliver of land dwarfed by almost every surrounding country, occupying one 80th of the area of Iran alone and with one twelfth of its population. Only a sense of a 3,000-year-old national history and a powerful and highly motivated army could have enabled such a state to survive in the teeth of fierce and unrelenting opposition.
Mr Deane concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people should prompt him to encourage those (currently beleaguered) moderates who wish to make peace with Israel. Instead, his misrepresentations serve to soften up public opinion for further attempts by Israel's enemies to achieve their oft-stated goal: its elimination. - Yours, etc,
DERMOT MELEADY, Clontarf, Dublin 3.